I have extended this offer to everyone announcing the rapture: I give you 10% of your net worth right now. And I get your net worth an hour after the rapture.
Yes, there will be a contract, I'm not an idiot...
So, if the rapture never occurs, you never get anything...? Seems like a pretty good deal to me.
Given that she identifies as a makeup artist online (I'm assuming there is only one LauRen Ramlan), I'm inclined to agree with your take. Interesting project, regardless.
I'm not sure "redeeming" is quite the right, and I don't personally agree with everything Gay said (nor do I think she said everything particularly well), but, as the saying goes, I'll defend her right to say it. The question was a trap and Gay walked into. Nuance is lost when politicians set up traps.
Europeans and Americans have, traditionally, had very different views on "hate speech." I think we're much closer now than we were even 20 years ago.
I said something like this in another post, but for me, the bottom line is really:
A. Are Palestinians or others allowed to call for "intifada" or active fighting against Israel? This implies fighting and killing Israelis.
B. Are Israelis or others allowed to call for ongoing bombing and fighting in Gaza and the West Bank? This implies fighting and killing Palestinians.
I do not believe statement B can be allowed while statement A is banned.
If supports of Israeli can call for bombing Gaza, than supporters of Palestinians should be able to call for attacking Israel.
We've been a post-truth society forever, perhaps. The only difference is that previously, a relatively smaller cohort could more easily control the narrative (politicians, news media, etc). With the Internet and social media, this is much harder. It's certainly made society much less coherent.
I hope the fact that you literally can't show me one single thing I've said in this conversation that is not true would lead you to a moment of introspection. Should be easy to do, if you're correct.
It's easier just to resort to schoolyard insults. Freedom is hard, and freedom of speech is especially hard. Truth is even harder.
Happy to continue chatting if you have anything to add other than sticking your fingers in your ears and chanting Nazi.
Because Israel doesn't control the West Bank
Maps:
https://conquer-and-divide.btselem.org/map-en.html
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/West_Bank_Access_Restrictions_June_2020.pdf
Israel controls the West Bank. There are enclaves of Palestinian Authority control, but you cannot travel from one end of the West Bank to the other without encountering Israeli control. Israel regularly runs operations throughout and within these enclaves.
nor did it operate in Gaza (until a few months ago).
Israel controlled all land and sea borders around Gaza. Israel controlled trade in and out of Gaza. Israel destroyed the only airport facilities in Gaza and, through sanctions and control of trade, blocked construction of a new airport. Israel has run dozens of operations within Gaza in the last decade alone (if not more), predating the current war.
Well, ignoring that Stefanik is presupposing that advocacy for either intifada or usage of the statement ("from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free") means genocide (and I don't universally agree with that presupposition), Gay's continued answer is:
CLAUDINE GAY: When speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies, including policies against bullying, harassment or intimidation, we take action. And we have robust disciplinary processes that allow us to hold individuals accountable.
Which again brings me back to my core point. If even saying that Palestinians are allowed to fight back against Israel--Intifada--is genocidal and anti-Semitic, then we have failed as a society that even pretends to protect free speech.
Flip it on its head. Are Jewish students allowed to call for continued bombing in Gaza? That is literally and explicitly calling for the murder of Palestinians. Why is statement A ok but statement B is not?
Thanks to people like you, the term Nazi has been so denatured and trivialized that it's essentially the same as calling someone a meanie. It's pretty sad.
I stand by what I've said. If you can point to one single thing I've said that isn't true, I'm all ears.
And you defending their attacks on civilians and genocidal goals makes YOU no better than a Nazi.
Right, so this is how these conversations almost invariably go. You claim I have lied, I asked you to cite *one single* thing I have said that is not true. Instead you call me a Nazi, call all Palestinians psychopathic, and make up false claim strawmen (e.g., you claim I am defending attacks on civilians).
Quite frankly, you're illustrating very well who precisely the liar is, and you're illustrating why we MUST BE ABLE TO DISCUSS these issues without immediately starting to froth at the mouth with claims of "anti-semitism" and "Nazi!!!!"
That's a very good point and well said.
The real problem is that supporting Hamas - who has repeatedly and incessantly called for the elimination of Jews, and taken every opportunity to do exactly that - is endorsing genocide.
You're absolutely right here, and this is what so gets lost. When ANY criticism of Israel, the Gaza military action, Israeli control over the West Bank, etc., is automatically met with cries of anti-semitism, Hamas gets a pass.
Of course, but they're not "fighting back," they're just fighting.
Right, so you as a third-party (presumably) observer get to decide what valid forms of fighting back are. So it's OK for the state of Israel to control the borders of Gaza and the West Bank, run targeted military and police expeditions through those regions any time they want, control imports/exports, etc., but the residents are only allowed to resist in certain ways prescribed as legitimate by you.
This is EXACTLY why we must have free and open discussion of the issues, because people like you want to use language, discussion, and solutions through cries of anti-semitism.
No, but the intifada is. It's what they teach their kids, it's what they practice.
Again, you apparently are the arbiter of valid resistance?
That didn't happen
Before 1948 there was no Jewish political nation that controlled large amounts of territory in the Levant. One day later, there was. Hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims lost their property, were murdered, expelled, or displaced. Those are facts that are not in dispute.
Your "facts" are ignorant nonsense
Cite one thing I have said that is false. I can back up every single statement I have made--I don't even think I have said anything that is in any dispute!
And you pretending they can be reasoned with is anti-Semitism.
Right, because any objection to the Israeli STATE or its actions is automatically anti-Semitic and the conversation must end immediately. Ridiculous.
Do the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have a right to fight back? Is any fighting back (e.g., intifada) automatically genocidal?
Were the Jews taking Muslim and Christian Arab land in 1948, expelling tens or hundreds of thousands, genocidal?
If we can’t have conversations about the facts, we can’t have a conversation. That’s what the enemies of free speech seem to want. Shut it down.
It literally does not mean that. This is the same trap that Gay fell into—any resistance to Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza is now “genocide.” It’s a pretty clever attempt to quash discussions.
"Better to ask for forgiveness than permission?"
I don't know to what degree it's fully cultural vs situational, but in multiple countries (including America) I have witnessed, firsthand, groups of Indian (from India) and Chinese (from China) students who seem to have absolutely no issue with organized and systematic in-group cheating. Again, I don't know if it's cultural, the position of being foreign students in a different country, or what. It seems pretty rampant, however.
The same Harvard who just fired a president for rampant plagiarism, and for whom calling for genocide is gray area that may or may not constitute "harassment" by Harvard student conduct guidelines?
Gay was a weak scholar who got the Harvard job in part due to both her plagiarism and her race and gender. I think that's undeniable. While most of her plagiarism was indeed of the most minor variety, some of it was not, and she clearly shows a pattern of plagiarizing. That should be punished, uniformly, across academia. I fully support her being removed from her role for this.
However, her responses in the Congressional hearing, that raised such ire, particularly amongst the Jewish donor class, are a separate issue.
https://rollcall.com/2023/12/13/transcript-what-harvard-mit-and-penn-presidents-said-at-antisemitism-hearing/
Here's a transcript of the hearing. I'm not going to bother attempting to summarize or highlighting the points, but you should read it yourself. What I will say is that Stefanik completely conflated the concepts of "intifada" and "genocide" so that any answer that gave any legitimacy to an intifada would automatically be considered anti-Semitic. In other words, any answer that didn't support the current status of the Palestinian and Israeli nations and peoples would automatically be considered anti-Semitic and the anti-speech fascists want that speech shut down. Stefanik argues that Harvard should not allow any opposition to Israel amongst its students.
That is unacceptable.
By those same standards, SUPPORTING the creation of Israel in the 1940 would be considered a genocidal act.
We have to be able to talk about ideas that other people may find offensive.
I don't think that just stating the fact that from tons of data, shoplifting goes up with self-checkout is the same as placing the blame on it.
The person quoted in the summary said that self-checkout hasn't delivered on any of its promises, and one of the reasons is theft. That's what I meant by placing the blame.
If we *know* that it goes up, why should we ramp up penalties/police to protect the revenue of businesses who are making this decision? If anything, I'd say it's a strong argument to reduce them. It's sort of like, the regulations around taking PIN codes for credit cards, if the point of sale doesn't accept chip and pin, then the liability shifts to the point of sale for fraud. We don't just increase policing and let them roll on with mag stripes forever, similarly companies that keep reducing their staff and using their own self-checkout, can at least pay a tax to cover this extra policing or something.
That kind of gets down to what the core purposes of laws of. Do laws exist to regulate behaviors? Do they exist to protect people from being harmed by other people? Do they exist to increase the general quality of life? Strengthen the state? Increase economic potential? Do they exist to implement morality? etc
For the most part, there is no agreement on these issues, and law is all of the above.
To me, I have chosen to live in a state and city that has NOT decriminalized shoplifying. I do no like the state of shopping in stores in San Francisco, Seattle, DC, etc., that I have experienced in the last ~3 years.
If we *know* that it goes up, why should we ramp up penalties/police to protect the revenue of businesses who are making this decision?
Because the point of law is to prevent harm? Stealing is harm.
For me, it's as simple as that. If you don't believe that law exists to prevent harm, maybe you disagree.
Remember to say hello to your bank teller.
